Comic Book Talk

[AceofKnaves]

I don’t mind *some* aging/passage of time, and I’m definitely good with expanding the world and adding characters and continuity points and such over time. I’m just no longer interested in the stories if they are no longer centered on the characters I love.

 

[RichardSimmonsRobot]

Occasionally. He had a run a few years ago where he realized his book was always M and could do such things. Even his early stuff was boundary pushing, but they covered the naughty bits. You see the more salacious ones online, but they are a small fraction of the now thousands and thousands of pages to the story.

While I agree I liked his earlier work more (which is true for most of the Image crew for me personally), I don't think it's that he got bad. He's doing what he feels like doing as he gets older. I respect that.

I wanted to like Savage Dragon more than I did upon actually reading it. I think we often feel nostalgia for the era then go back and find instances of "oh this is why I wasn't reading this back then." I liked the OG Larson work (admittedly the Jim Lee issue of Dragon flowed better, which isn't a great portrayal when a guest artist does a better job with your own book than you do) but this new blocky Frank Miller style just screams "I'm tired, let's go with someone else's style that I can do faster." None of that endears me to the process or denotes passion for the project to me. I like the Sin City books, but that's also with the actual artist's aesthetics. Larson doesn't do a lot of the negative space effects that helped make Sin City stand out artistically. I think being the longest running Image book drawn by it's original artist may be the claim to fame Larson is trying to hold onto, which is pretty niche, but I can appreciate THAT aspect of things. I just don't view emulating an "easier" or "faster" style as all that admirable, especially since the books don't come out monthly as it is.

 

[altcunningham]

Don't want to sully the Marvel Legends thread with comic talk, let alone Distinguished Competition.

So to follow up my DC talk:

I was such a latecomer to DC comics outside of the Trinity, that my first real deep dive was Green Arrow Quiver. And it's my poster child for saying that as long as a story is interesting, you don't need to know anything about anything going in. I knew nothing except that Ollie and Dinah used to be a couple. I picked up everything in that book and that thing was dense with lore. Turned me into a fan of everyone in that book and had me change loyalties for the aughts